Andorra

The theme for this year’s World Bank Civil Society Fund grant competition is, “Development and Climate Change – Building Community Resilience in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka”While specifying guidelines for the Fund, we encourage applicants to develop proposals based on their creativity. CSF supports activities that empower and enable citizens to take initiatives to influence development outcomes.

Feizal Samath’s recent article,“Children in the Coastal Town of Kalmunai.” gives a snapshot of Gender issues and Climate Change in the dry zone of Sri Lanka. The article captures the burden on women caused by water shortages, health issues due to lack of clean water, and also the need to include women in policy planning.

In a speech made by World Bank Country Director for Sri Lanka and the Maldives, Naoko Ishii on International Women’s Day 2010, the issue of Gender Equity in the Sri Lankan context was highlighted “Sri Lanka is the best performer in South Asia, when we look at indicators such as by how long women live, how educated they are and if they have a decent standard of living. However, when we measure if women in Sri Lanka have exercised those capacities in economic and political life, the picture looks very different.”